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[ 8 minute read ]

The lighthouse of my mind

After a while, being by myself gets weird. 

I can spend about two weeks without speaking a single word to someone or similarly being the focus of someone's words, otherwise known as social interaction, before I get a bit of an itch to engage with other people. I realise that many, many people, particularly in the modern environment of SmartPhones and social media will find that situation to be intolerable and may even feel that I am exaggerating my claim. I mean, how could I know how long I can go without human interaction before I need to take a sip of validation? I would have to have been isolated for many consecutive days, many times, to be able to come up with a reasoned understanding of my reliance on my own resources, wouldn't I? Well, I have, been isolated many times for many consecutive days, that is.

Of course, I am not totally isolated, because reading a fiction book is leaving myself on a shelf somewhere, and experiencing someone else's story instead. To be honest, I tend to go to the shop for supplies and usually talk to the shop keeper or his son. But, his son never really responds. He doesn't have his nose buried in his phone; he just doesn't really respond to me poking him with words.

Up until the last couple of days I was confused, even contemptuous of people who, to me, incessantly chatter. It seems to me that their minds are out of gear. About two years ago, someone asked me about how I like conversation to be, and I replied, 'It has to have structure.' I have been an employer and while on a job the discourse would be largely me co-ordinating work in real-time. However, one customer, at her home, asked me and one member of staff, 'How long have you two known each other?' I recognised then that my staff member and I had been rapping; not in rhyme, just a constant back and forth while we worked. We knew what to do, and knew how each of us would do it, which freed us up to just freewheel.

Looking back at that I realise how good that felt. I was relaxed. Doing something that required constant attention while engaged in coasting conversation was satisfying.

However, today I am bemused by just how needy I find people to be. I should qualify that. I find clues to how people publicly act in ways that seem to have a focus on finding validation of themselves. You might say that I am not qualified to judge other people and I am only drawing conclusions from snippets of information, but you would also have to recognise that I am cold and heartless, unlike you (probably). Of course, I am not really heartless, just lost, and so I don't necessarily engage emotions when I encounter the world. Primarily, my perception of new things is mostly unfettered by empathy. I see the structure and not the fabric of people. Indeed, if I am inclined to be interested, I have to switch on or shift my emotions to overlay my cold perception. Yes, I know. It sounds really harsh, but, I think nearly everyone does this, nearly all the time. I just know I do it. If you are driving and having a conversation within your vehicle, you probably don't care about the feelings of the driver behind when you brake hard for the empty parking spot you have just seen. That is inconsiderate. That is normal behaviour, unfortunately. Driving experience will slot in a realisation that you are about to get out of your car and there is an angry driver nearby. I consider the driver behind, let's just put it that way.

But, something I thought unfathomable seems to have become much clearer since my catharsis yesterday. I am glad that in understanding myself better I can understand others better. Sadly, I think I have uncovered something quite shocking to me (When I describe myself as cold and heartless I am only providing a base for my make-up. I can be shocked). In this case, I have found a hollowness; not dark, but lonely. Loneliness, I suggest is vast. It is a gigantic cave in which only the observer's voice echoes. I already know I am lonely but I have never really understood how to see the signs in other people, because almost nobody will stand up and outright say 'I am lonely.' It is stigmatised. Worse than that, I realise, it might not even be recognised by the 'sufferer'. So, I can understand why people will seek validation from others; complete strangers that they have no hope of ever meeting, online.

What is this image about? These are consecutive comments to, I think is a 1980s music video I briefly watched on YouTube. I can't remember which one, but I had been hovering around Yazoo at the time. Something I find interesting is that the comments are chronologically consecutive yet separated by months, and the content of the comments is interesting. Combined, these aspects paint a picture for me.

It is a 1980s music video; I accessed this video in the first week of September 2025; the timestamps for the comments are from February to July 2025; there are no intervening comments; and the question is the same, almost identical in fact.

The number of replies may be relevant but I will come to that in a bit.

Initially, I thought that they are comments from nostalgic persons who are revisiting their heyday experiences of synthesised, new wave music. That would make them about sixty-something years old. I suggest that around that age, many people are less socially malleable, and forming new friendships is more difficult than in their youth because they are no longer inclined to accept new perspectives that exist in strangers. So, I went on to imagine that there might be a slow but steady decline in social activity as school friendships wither, offspring move away to places that make random or daily physical contact difficult, and marriage partners are a bit more predictable than they once were. I have to guess all that because my life is not a suitable base for making parallels in thinking. I suppose people in their sixties use short phrases such as 'Who's listening.....' Don't they?

However, the person's age doesn't really matter. It is that they are, in my mind, asking for validation of their existence by hoping that people respond to them; their question. The question gives nothing away. it provides no information about the questioner. It is a highly efficient way to get people to recognise that the questioner exists. I might say that in normal and everyday conversations, no-one just listens and says nothing. We want to be heard. How then do people feel satisfied from people recognising they exist under the guise of knowing that other people are listening to the same piece of music? And then it hit me. At a real-life concert, someone might turn to a complete stranger and shout, 'They're great, aren't they?' The other person might say, 'Excellent'. Maybe I am at the BBC Proms with that. I don't feel comfortable using swearwords unnecessarily. But this isn't personal validation as being, tell me I exist by responding to me. This is forming a connection by looking for a response that says, 'We are alike.'

So, are the questions from people who are 'in the groove' or entranced, and are just expressing their enjoyment? No, I don't think so. They might be as such, but the question is really about numbers; how many? I suggest, the number of responses is relevant to the questioner. I suggest, that to the questioner one thousand responses would initiate a greater satisfaction than only a single response. I suggest, that because that is so, it is someone's ego that is displayed behind the questions. 

It is telling that the same question asked three times, in February, June and July 2025 gets less 'likes' and less actual written replies. I can't help thinking that if I was a teenager I would think the last questioner to be a 'saddo'. With that in mind, I blanked out the names in the image. But, I think, a teenager would be right to think that, as a veneer of thinking. For all I know there could be an experimenter at large. Perhaps the third questioner is gauging something.

Certainly, it seems that either July was a happier time to be outside than June and definitely February in the Northern Hemisphere, or people are thinking to themselves, when they see the last comment, 'Get a grip, that device for validation is thoroughly cooked by now, in fact it is burnt.'

Overall, the whole issue saddens me. I was going to write 'deeply' saddens me, but that well is already full, so, as a solute, it will not have any effect in me that I would be able to detect without significant effort. To be honest, because I am intrigued, it does change my thought processing. So, it saddens me to imagine that some people are so desperate for new connections that they will deliberately hang onto the coat-tails of creators, while exhibiting no creativity of their own, and offering nothing of themselves, just to be noticed. Unless, I am missing something, and the question is really a modern way of seeking responses that say, 'We are alike'. Which is validation of belonging to a group.

Personally, I would feel ashamed if I wrote those questions because there is nothing to applaud. But, of course, I am standing in a different place to these people, and to feel shame would mean that one is outside of oneself and recognising oneself, either deliberately or as a sudden and surprising epiphany. Of course, I also have a need to feel validated, but I really think if everyone said 'Good Morning' to me when I walk about, I would not feel any approbation for any talent or achievement, and so I would only recognise polite people, In fact, I would tire of it if the incidence of salutations went beyond, perhaps, twelve per hour. 

I don't in any way mean to disparage the questioners as losers, 'saddos' or cheapskates. Far from it. I am much more concerned with understanding why, to my understanding, such low level connections is something to be sought.

As I remember it, in The Sims, the digital dolls-house game, there is cheap, 'low-level comfort' furniture that gives a slow return for recuperation. It takes a long time to be refreshed. I am focused on why the questioners do not have deep and comfortable relationships that refresh them more fully than fleeting sips of anonymous connection. Are they top-ups? Do people really need top-ups? I suspect it is really a want rather than a need, unless there is, of course an addiction to dopamine, and the anticipation of a response triggers that dopamine. But, if that is true, then I am saddened that people are acting no differently to a rat in a laboratory. Am I so different? I think so. 

Continuing with the furniture theme. If we sit all day, even on an uncomfortable chair, so we are always topping up, the comfortable armchair at home is not something we cherish and long for. We won't seek it, simply because we don't value it as much as someone who stands all day and then, in returning home, slips off their shoes and sinks into deep and surrounding comfort. I might suggest that the chairs are icons representing relationships. I will always desire an armchair but only require a wooden chair that offers little comfort, so I can continue to function; that is why I am resilient and why I never top-up. To me, it is empty and time-consuming. 

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